Serial movement timing and musical experience.

Abstract

Musicians and non-musicians were compared on a serial movement-timing task incorporating six continuous 11-cm segments. The serial pattern was structured for both spatial and temporal symmetry. There were seven subjects in each group and 50 test trials were analyzed for timing error. The non-musicians were less accurate and more variable for certain parts of the pattern. The findings supported the view that musical practice can assist the process of mapping internal representations of serial relations to novel spatio-temporal patterns of movement.